Teenagers have become mostly immune to the ‘do good’ messages they are bombarded with daily. Sharon Goedeke’s message, however, is one teens might want to listen to: Be safe. Be happy. Be thumbbody.

Goedeke and her husband are the founders of a company called Thumbs on the Wheel. Thumbs on the Wheel aims at taking teenagers’ focus off of their phones and, true to the name, back on the wheel.

“We try to compel anyone with car keys and a cell phone to do the right thing,” Goedeke said. “Just use common sense and simply drive with your thumbs on the wheel.”

Though texting and driving is an occurrence that has become more and more common, Thumbs on the Wheel takes a different approach to tackling the problem.

“There are a lot of messages out there on safe driving and we applaud all of those,” Goedeke said. “Our message tries to address the human nature side of the problem. It’s not about doing it because the law says so and it’s not about doing it because you saw a sad story on Oprah; it’s about driving safely because somewhere deep inside people know the difference between right and wrong.”

A reliance on everyone’s basic knowledge of good and bad is at the heart of the Thumbs on the Wheel philosophy. Goedeke believes the problem of texting and driving is fairly straightforward and doesn’t need to be addressed using extreme measures.

According to Goedeke, texting and driving can be solved by merely encouraging people to employ their common sense.

“It’s good to pass laws, but we wanted to try a solution that was just an attitude and a personal choice,” Goedeke said.

Thumbs on the Wheel promotes safe driving for all drivers, but high school and college students are special targets for the company.

Having grown up in a society heavily imbued with technology, Goedeke considers youth especially prone to texting while driving.

“Young people are much more dependent on technology than any 40-year old ever was when they were getting their license,” Goedeke said. “It’s normal for a technology-driven person to respond to that buzz at any time because they’ve been doing it forever. What they have to realize is you can’t do that when you’re behind the wheel of a car.”

Goedeke hopes Thumbs on the Wheel will do much to help people come to that realization.

Goedeke came up with the idea for Thumbs on the Wheel with her husband fairly recently after the problem of texting and driving continued to grow.

“A few years ago, we started to hear headlines about the terrible things that had happened because of distracted driving,” Goedeke said. “Hearing these things, we thought, this is interesting that our country must pass laws to combat a problem that really involves nothing more than common sense.”

Though the company is young, it has already spread to 13 states through Goedeke’s grassroots efforts.

The budding company just celebrated one of its first major accomplishments after a Missouri hospice organization agreed to be a ‘thumbbody’ company.

The organization, which drives cars around to care for their patients, has pledged to place their full support behind Thumbs on the Wheel and the issue it promotes.

With one success already under her belt, Goedeke has big plans for her company, among which are bringing Thumbs on the Wheel to all 50 states and establishing a ‘thumbbody’ high school.

More than anything else, however, Goedeke wants to see texting and driving eradicated.

“We want to get to the point where just like you buckle your seatbelt as soon as you get in the car, you automatically don’t pick up the phone while you’re driving,” Goedeke said. “We want it to be socially unacceptable to drive any other way.”

CHS has been home to a club with similar goals in past years: Peers Protecting Peers. Juniors Margaret Mulligan and Lauren Friedman were co-Presidents of the club last year.

Mulligan echoes Goedeke’s sentiments about the importance of practicing safe driving.

“I think that safe driving and being aware of how important it is to focus on the road can really save lives,” Mulligan said.

Though Thumbs on the Wheel has yet to reach Clayton High School, Peers Protecting Peers has shown just how prevalent unsafe driving is at CHS.
During a random seatbelt check conducted by Peers Protecting Peers last year as Clayton drivers were leaving the parking lot, 42 out of 277 drivers (including staff and parents) weren’t wearing their seatbelts or were driving unsafely.

Friedman explains that many at CHS don’t know just how important it is to drive safe.

“I think texting and driving affects a lot of our friends,” Friedman said. “If people haven’t gotten into a car accident, they don’t think it’s that big of a deal. But people really need to think about it and be educated about it.”

Both the local efforts of Peers Protecting Peers and the more national efforts of Thumbs on the Wheel attempt to confront a problem that is increasingly pertinent and increasingly dangerous.

“If we don’t all start our cars knowing that safety is important, we put our own lives and the lives of others at stake,” Mulligan said.